What did Lenovo go through from "national brand" to "Si Manan's wrath"?

What has Lenovo experienced from "national brand" to "getting out of China" and then to the anger of Si Manan, online celebrity?

A dream is the "eldest son" of the Institute of Computing Technology of Chinese Academy of Sciences. At the initial stage of its establishment, the Institute of Computing Technology gave strong support in terms of material resources, manpower, financial resources and scientific and technological achievements. In the initial stage, relying on computing resources, there were still many hard-core technologies, and we were proud of it, which was once the pride of China's national brands and Chinese people. However, on the one hand, it is under the name of "national brand" and "national enterprise" to receive zf orders, on the other hand, it is an indisputable fact that the price of computers in the American market is one-third cheaper than that in China, and all kinds of doubts about 5G voting have fallen from the altar. Now there is online celebrity's hard work. Let's take a look at past lives.

The founder of a certain idea is not Liu Chuanzhi

On March 22, 29, Liu Chuanzhi said at the mobilization meeting of Zhongguancun National Independent Innovation Demonstration Zone: "Twenty years ago, I left the research institute and founded Lenovo in a 2-square-meter communication room on Zhongguancun Electronic Street". We all mistakenly believe that Liu Chuanzhi is the founder of Lenovo. But in fact, Liu Chuanzhi only became the chairman of Lenovo Group in 29, and another person founded Lenovo.

Now you can look up the news in 29 on the Internet, and you can see the article "Liu Chuanzhi as chairman of Legend Holdings, Ceng Maochao stepping down". According to the press release, before 29, Ceng Maochao was the chairman and president of Lenovo, and after he left office, Liu Chuanzhi became the chairman and president.

At that time, many companies were set up in Zhongguancun Street, and many teachers from the Research Institute of Computing Pillar of Chinese Academy of Sciences went out to start companies, that is, they worked for people, checked machines, got 3 to 4 yuan a day, and the salary of the Research Institute of Computing Pillar was more than 3 yuan a month, which had a great impact on the thinking of researchers in the Research Institute of Computing Pillar. Ceng Maochao, director of the Institute, is still relatively open-minded. He wants to know whether the Pillar Research Institute can set up a company by itself, make money, turn it over to the Institute, solve the problem of urgent need for funds for scientific research, and retain researchers.

in November, 1984, the Research Institute of Computing Pillar of Academia Sinica transformed its scientific research achievements and invested 2, yuan to establish a new technology development company of Computing Pillar Research Institute of Academia Sinica owned by the whole people. Ceng Maochao, director and chairman, Wang Shuhe as general manager, and Zhang Zuxiang and Liu Chuanzhi as deputy general managers. It can be seen that when Lenovo was founded, Liu Chuanzhi was just a participant, and there were two levels of leaders above him.

visit the thatched cottage

don't underestimate this 2, yuan, which was equivalent to 2 million yuan now. Some people say that with such a large sum of money, there are still houses in the office to use casually, and the starting point is very high. Even compared with the current start-up, the conditions are much better, and it should be opened all the way! The reality is so cruel that these three managers almost collapsed soon. What are the reasons? They were cheated by 14 thousand, and the company just started and lost such a large sum of money. In order to survive, they put down the figure of technicians and began to sell electronic gadgets along the street, dumping some electronic watches, roller skates, sports shorts, refrigerators, etc., similar to the "profiteers" at that time.

but the pride and momentum in the minds of intellectuals support them, so they should not sink down like this. They should be like technicians. They began to think that selling goods along the street with their current strength is not enough to keep the company alive, so we have to ask experts for help.

The three people reached an agreement and drew "Ni Guangnan" to endorse. What's Ni Guangnan's background? Previously, the vice president of the National Institute of Canada visited the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He became interested in Ni Guangnan's Chinese character input method and invited Ni Guangnan to work in the National Institute of Canada. In September 1981, Ni Guangnan was invited to work in the National Research Institute of Canada as a visiting researcher. He came into contact with the advanced technology in the west and was determined to make the results of Chinese character processing into a microcomputer for Chinese character display. To this end, he spent thousands of Canadian dollars to buy several key originals of Chinese character microcomputer prototypes and brought them back to China, including DRAM and Z8CPU. After returning to China, he organized a research group to develop a prototype of Chinese character processing and display.

the three of them muttered, we are a small company whose life and death are uncertain. How can Ni Guangnan have a crush on us? At that time, Ni Guangnan declined Canada's high salary and became famous in China. From the perspective of strength, Ni Guangnan is unlikely to have a crush on this company. Ni Guangnan also mastered the core technology of the chip, and many high-tech enterprises looked for him, but he was declined one by one. He firmly believed that he would develop a "Hanka" belonging to China.

Wang and Zhang went several times and were turned back. Lao Liu cheered them up and told the story of Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang in the Three Kingdoms. Don't give up easily. Wang, Zhang and Liu have gone again, probably because of their colleagues in the Academy of Sciences and the company owned by the whole people, so give them a hand. Ni Guangnan finally agreed to join this Canadian company as the chief engineer.

Computing the transformation of technological achievements, the company developed a PC-based "Lenovo Hanka" one year after its establishment. It took Lenovo Hanka more than ten years from project research to product production. However, the scientific research results of the calculation did not share the technology in the company, which was later controversial, involving the transfer of state-owned assets.

in the early days of computers, the CPU performance of the processor was limited, so it was impossible to perform multi-task operations, and the Chinese character library was huge, which took time to process. This part of the work was handed over to Hanka, a plug-in. When we type the word "Gao", phrases like "happy", ""and "will automatically appear on the screen, which is how Lenovo got its name.

Lenovo Hanka has a high profit, with a set price of 4, yuan and a net profit of 2, yuan. At that time, the average monthly salary of residents was only in 5 yuan, and the company was in a good situation. The bundled sales of Hanka and microcomputers also boosted the sales of microcomputers. In less than three years, Hanka has created a profit of 12.37 million for the company. Hanka has been sold for 1 years, and 16, sets have been sold in one * * *, with profits and taxes of hundreds of millions.

the dispute between technology, industry and trade and the route of trade, industry and technology

At first, some people thought it was not a soft egg like everyone, and there were some hard goods. In the early days of its establishment, Computing gave strong support from manpower, material resources, financial resources, scientific and technological achievements and many other aspects, that is, it was cultivated as the "eldest son". Lenovo Hanka is the transformation of research achievements of Chinese Academy of Sciences for more than 1 years, and it has not been invested in the company as a technology, which is also the focus of controversy. More than 13 scientific and technological personnel in the institute joined a project, and their treatment in the Chinese Academy of Sciences will be retained. After retirement, they will be retired employees of the Institute of Computing Technology and enjoy the national retirement treatment. The company can also use the instruments and equipment in the institute for free, and the value of optical oscilloscopes will reach 3, yuan. Banks are always too poor to love the rich, start-ups need liquidity, and the calculation also provides a loan guarantee of tens of millions of yuan.

In 1988, when someone wanted to start developing ASIC chips, Ni Guangnan keenly noticed the development trend of computing hardware, from small circuits to large-scale integrated circuits, and applied this new technology in Lenovo Hanka. ASIC chip was adopted in the seventh generation Hanka and achieved success. This kind of chip has sold millions of chips. Due to the competition of international giants, it has little benefit, but it is also a bold experiment.

in 1991, Lenovo developed an ASIC chip LXCG9 for Lenovo's Chinese character laser printer, which is also another plug-in. The speed of generating Chinese characters is very fast, with hundreds of Chinese characters per second, which doubles the speed of printing Chinese characters by HP laser printer. On this basis, the LJ4B laser printer was also developed, with a profit of more than 5, yuan each. Lenovo laser printer filled the domestic gap and grew stronger in the competition with foreign brands.

In 1994, Ni Guangnan was also the technical leader of the national technology development project of "Multimedia Technology". He won a national project of "Multimedia Absorbing Articles and Board-level Product Technology" for a certain enterprise, and won 1 million yuan in funding. Unfortunately, Liu, the head of Lenovo, did not approve this project.

In 1993, a program-controlled switchboard project was carried out almost at the same time as Huawei, and some network access licenses were obtained earlier than Huawei. At that time, Lenovo had resources that Huawei dreamed of obtaining.

At the end of December, Lenovo signed a contract with Langfang Telephone Bureau. On New Year's Day, 1994, the first Lenovo program-controlled exchange LEX5 started successfully in Langfang, Hebei. In less than three years, the project brought Lenovo a net profit of 2.86 million yuan. The gross rate of SPC exchange is over 4%, but this product is sold to telecommunication bureau, and the repayment period is long. Therefore, to expand the production scale, a lot of liquidity is needed, and in addition, investment in R&D is needed to launch more models. In this context, the funds of this department are stretched. In order to get out of the predicament, Ni Guangnan suggested that the program control department be changed into a subsidiary, separated from the head office, self-financing, and self-financing. The plan is that someone wants to hold 51% of the shares, and the employees invest their own money. At that time, everyone was optimistic about the future of SPC exchanges, and the fundraising of 2 million individuals was overfulfilled. Even the logistics and security personnel scrambled to ask the SPC department for quotas, but some people wanted to reject the project on the grounds that it needed continuous capital investment.

CPU is indispensable for any electronic product, and the core technology of CPU is monopolized by WINTEL Alliance. Ni Guangnan thinks that technology is not the way out after all. Sooner or later, people will choke you and suffocate you. Determined to be China's own CPU, he led a team to set up "Lianhai Microelectronics Design Center". Compared with the above-mentioned chips, the development cycle of CPU is longer, the demand for funds is greater, and there is no benefit in the short term. In Liu's view, confronting WINTEL Alliance is tantamount to self-destruction. At that time, Lenovo made a lot of money on Hanka and computers, and lived a good life. There was no need to do such stupid things that took the world by storm.

The above-mentioned chip projects were also rejected when funds were raised. The contradiction between the two people accumulated over time and finally broke out. On June 3, 1995, more than 3 middle and high-level people got together to hold a conference, and the atmosphere was quite tense. At the meeting, the representative of China Academy of Sciences read out the article "Report on the Disagreement of the Leading Group of Lenovo Group" and dismissed Ni Guangnan as the chief engineer. All the staff of the original R&D center were devolved to the technical support departments of various business divisions, led by the business division manager. Lenovo has completely transformed from "technology industry and trade" to "trade technology", and all research and development has been suspended.

in a certain decade, Ni Guangnan thought that the year with the highest R&D expenditure was 1993, but R&D expenditure only accounted for .67% of the sales revenue. On the other hand, Huawei spent more than 15% of the sales revenue when it invested the most in R&D.. In the same period of 1995, Huawei launched the program-controlled switchboard project, and President Ren lost all his money, so employees' salaries could not be paid. Since then, it has created a watershed between Huawei and Huawei. Some people want to have a good hand, but they are badly beaten. At that time, some people wanted to have an ultra-luxury R&D team in China, get a network access license ahead of Huawei, and have the full support of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. They wanted money and money, policies and people. This is Huawei's dream resource, but it directly gave up R&D, dissolved its technical team and embarked on a comprador road of no return.

The road to internationalization

In 23, the global computer increment did not increase, and the competition in the domestic market became increasingly fierce. After the international brands gained a firm foothold, they made efforts in the low-end market. Both domestic and foreign manufacturers are caught in a life-and-death price war, and they are tacitly slashing prices to compete for the stock market. DELL Dell is a direct selling model. It is a small customer from a big customer, eliminating the middleman to earn the difference, which has great cost advantage. HP HP adopts the "direct sales+distribution" model, adopts the direct sales model for industries and major customers, and adopts the distribution model for other customers, and continues to expand its market share in the commercial PC field in China. At first, I wanted to sell directly, and then there was a large backlog of products. After Yang took office, he directly closed more than 2 direct stores across the country and adjusted them to distribution. The situation was excellent and quickly reversed the situation. In that year, he sold 5, computers.

Gartner announced the sales ranking of PC market in China in 24. A certain company wanted to occupy the first place in the domestic market with 25.1%, which made us recognize the national brand of a certain company. Dell and IBM ranked fourth and fifth respectively.

computers don't have core technology, so it's hard to show their differentiated advantages after they are assembled in the factory in Shenzhen. The market competition is becoming more and more fierce, and the price war has entered a white-hot stage, which makes the profit very meager.

according to the report submitted by IBM to the U.S. securities and futures commission in 25, IBM's PC division accumulated losses of 965 million dollars from January 21 to June 24. The report also shows that IMB PC has suffered losses many times, even if a large number of manufacturing operations were outsourced to manufacturing plants in China. IBM revealed in the report that it recorded a loss of $258 million in 23 and $139 million in the first half of 24.

one domestic market has become a stock market, and there is not much room for further expansion. If you want to enter the international market, the other is losing money and insolvent. If you want to get rid of this burden, the two parties hit it off. In 24, someone wanted to buy IBM's global personal computer business with cash and stock, and also undertook the debt of IBM's personal computer of 5 million US dollars. The year 24 was the highlight of a certain dream, and its merger and acquisition made history. In the past, only foreign companies bought China enterprises, and there was no precedent for state-owned enterprises to buy foreign-funded enterprises. We felt honored that a certain dream wanted to be the pride of China. People's Daily also issued a document praising a certain achievement. "A certain dream has gone through 2 years, which is exactly the 2 years of China's reform and opening up. A certain dream keeps pace with the times, and its development process is a typical sample of China enterprises' growth, maturity and nationalization, which maps out the trajectory of China's economic changes from the side ..."

Around 2, Liu put forward the concept of managing three elements, namely, building a team first and setting a strategy second; The third team; Building a team is the most critical step, that is, forming a team. Lei Jun spends 8% of his time looking for people, and only a good team can have good execution. Setting a strategy is the company's long-term and short-term goal planning. Work out the task plan around this goal, and decompose the task into individuals at different levels, and help all levels to achieve specific tasks with a good reward and punishment system. Leading a team is how to motivate employees with spiritual and material rewards and establish a perfect system and mechanism for cultivating and selecting talents. In 24, Yang practiced these three elements of management and fought a beautiful battle with Dell. At that time, he became famous, and Liu was honored as the "godfather".

falling from the sky

As the saying goes, the higher you hold, the more you fall.